Is Patrick Stewart Retiring? The Actor Answers the Avengers: Doomsday Rumor

Is Patrick Stewart retiring?

No. Asked directly by TV Insider, Stewart said he has no plans to stop acting: “I can’t imagine ever officially ‘retiring.’ I’ll always and forever be an actor.” He continues to take new roles, and Avengers: Doomsday is not his final film.

What he actually said

The fuller answer is more interesting than the headline.

“As any actor my age will tell you, there are fewer and fewer available roles as we get older. That being said, I still continue to receive interesting offers and I love being challenged by new work — like voicing a pig’s head in Riz Ahmed’s brilliant new series Bait.”

Then:

“I can’t imagine ever officially ‘retiring.’ I’ll always and forever be an actor.”

That first part isn’t a defiant soundbite. It’s an honest description of what happens to actors as they age — the offers thin out — followed by an acknowledgement that he keeps saying yes anyway.

And the example he reaches for isn’t Professor X or the Royal Shakespeare Company. It’s a pig’s head in a Riz Ahmed series, described as “brilliant.”

At 86, having played Jean-Luc Picard, Charles Xavier, Macbeth and King Lear, the thing he volunteers as currently exciting is a voice role as a pig’s head. That’s not a man edging toward the door.

Where did the rumor come from?

Nowhere, as far as we can establish.

The claim that Doomsday would be Stewart’s final film circulated widely online without a trade report, a named journalist, or an interview attached to it. It was repeated until it was familiar, and then it was solid enough that Stewart was asked to respond to it.

We label rumors as rumors here, so it’s worth saying plainly: this one never had a source.

Is he in Avengers: Doomsday?

Yes. Stewart returns as Professor Charles Xavier, reprising the role he first played in 2000’s X-Men and most recently in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

Avengers: Doomsday arrives in theaters December 18.

Source: TV Insider, via GamesRadar